Tag: John the Baptist

Living in the New

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Sermon for Sunday, December 14, 2025 || Advent 3A || Matthew 11:2-11

Imagine with me the imprisoned John the Baptist in the days before his execution. He has sent his disciples to ask Jesus the question from today’s Gospel reading, and they have just returned with Jesus’ answer.

My days are numbered, my friends. Herod is weak. He’s a petty ruler susceptible to the whims and flattery of those around him. One of these days I fear someone I have angered with my words will sway Herod to kill me and that will be that. But until that day comes, I will do everything I can to help you live into the new reality that is happening all around us. You will not be left orphaned when I am gone. I have only ever been a caretaker, a herald for the one who is coming after me. Because of what you just told me, I am convinced more than ever that Jesus is that one.

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Decency

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Sermon for Sunday, December 15, 2024 || Advent 3C || Luke 3:7-18

On June 9, 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy sat in a hearing room and attacked a young lawyer named Fred Fisher for communist sympathies. Fisher was a member of Joe Welch’s law firm, and Welch did not take kindly to McCarthy bringing up Fisher, considering Welch had a deal with McCarthy’s own lawyer, Roy Cohn, that neither Fisher’s past nor Cohn’s own dubious history of missing the Korean War draft would be brought up at the hearing. But McCarthy could not help himself. And so Joe Welch spoke words that have gone down in history, thanks both to their televised nature and their puncturing of McCarthy’s indestructible aura. “Have you no sense of decency?” Welch asked. “At long last have you left no sense of decency?”

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The Dawn from on High

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Sermon for Sunday, December 8, 2024 || Advent 2C || The Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79)

There’s a wonderful scene in the movie The Two Towers, which is the middle film of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I know I talk a lot about Star Wars in sermons, but my love for The Lord of the Rings is even greater than my love for Star Wars. So stick with me while I describe the scene. The people of Edoras have left their homes to take shelter in the great bastion known as Helm’s Deep. A few days before the flight to the supposedly impregnable fortress, the wizard Gandalf raced out of Edoras on his majestic steed Shadowfax in order to round up the cavalry spread across the country of Rohan. “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day,” Gandalf told Aragorn. “At dawn, look to the east.”

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Trust This Good News

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Sermon for Sunday, February 18, 2024 || Lent 1B || Mark 1:9-15

On this First Sunday in Lent, we always hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. If you’re wondering if you nodded off during the Gospel reading and missed the details of the temptations, don’t worry. You didn’t nod off. The Gospel According to Mark skips the details in favor of moving the story along quickly from one beat to the next. And that gives us the opportunity to focus on a different element of the story this morning. As Mark moves us swiftly past Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, the Gospel writer tells us, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

I’d like to spend our sermon time today breaking down this single sentence because there’s a lot in it. By the time we’re done, I hope you will have an understanding of the concept of “good news” as Jesus is using the term.

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Washing with the Holy Spirit

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Sermon for Sunday, January 7, 2024 || Epiphany 1B || Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Every year on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we read the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan. Jesus comes up out of the water after John dunks him in the river, and Jesus feels the presence of the Holy Spirit alighting on him like a dove. Our other two readings today speak of the Spirit as well. In the reading from Genesis, a “wind from God” sweeps over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul baptizes a dozen folks, and they discover the Holy Spirit’s power granting them spiritual gifts. In the Gospel, John the Baptist speaks of the difference between his baptizing with water and the one coming after him baptizing with the Holy Spirit.

That’s the line that caught me this week: Jesus baptizing with the Holy Spirit. The word “baptize” is the Greek word that means “to wash.” It makes total sense to be washed with water. But what does it mean to be washed with the Holy Spirit?

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The Fire

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Sermon for Sunday, December 4, 2022 || Advent 2A || Matthew 3:1-12

Today I’m going to talk about the concept of repentance. But to get there, I need to talk about my experience of the fire here in Mystic that destroyed Seaport Marine last Sunday night. On Sunday evenings, Leah and I play Dungeons and Dragons with some friends in our basement. We were wrapping up our game when we heard a thunk coming from upstairs. Leah went to investigate and found a book had fallen off of one of the kids’ beds. No big deal. But right when she got back downstairs, we heard another thunk, and then another. But they weren’t thunks. They were explosions.

We went outside into the parking lot and that’s when we saw the intense orange glow filling the sky over the buildings in downtown Mystic. Orange smoke poured northward, deepening to gray then black as it billowed forth. We could see flames above the buildings. Sirens rent the air, a near constant wail of fire trucks from all over the region screaming towards the blaze. The trouble for the six of us, however, was that, from our position, we couldn’t tell where the fire was. We couldn’t tell where the fire trucks were headed. I climbed out onto the roof of the education wing to try to get a better look, but I still couldn’t tell what was on fire. 

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The Lord is Near

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Sermon for Sunday, December 13, 2021 || Advent 3C || Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

Today’s lesson from Philippians begins with one of the most beloved verses of scripture: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” There’s a good chance your grandma had this embroidered on a throw pillow. Or, maybe you are a grandmother, and you do have this verse embroidered on a throw pillow. I am definitely going to mention this beloved verse during this sermon, but mostly we need to tackle a few words that come up a verse later. How we encounter these few words can completely change the way we read this passage and, indeed, our walks with God.

Those few words are these: “The Lord is near.” Now, I’m going to say them again in just a moment, but first I want you to settle yourself. Take a deep breath. Get ready to listen to your body. Here we go:

“The Lord is near.”

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Theological Geography

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Sermon for Sunday, December 5, 2021 || Advent 2C || Luke 3:1-6

When I was in high school, I was a huge geography nerd. Geography was one of my specialties on my high school’s quiz bowl team. I knew every capital of every country in the world, all the major rivers and seas and mountains – you name it. One time in a competition, I had to fill out a map of the countries and capitals of Central and South America in less than two minutes. Let me stress…I cannot do that anymore. But I still find geography fascinating, and today’s Gospel lesson has a geographical bend to it. John the Baptist quotes the Prophet Isaiah, who proclaims that God will raise up valleys and lower mountains and make roads straight and even.

In today’s Gospel reading, and, indeed, in the whole season that spans Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, geography takes on a very theological dimension. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning: theological geography. I hope you’re as excited as I am.

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Sent by God (or Bible Hero Syndrome)

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Sermon for Sunday, December 13, 2020 || Advent 3B || John 1:6-8, 19-28
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Did you know that you have been sent by God? It’s true. We don’t often think about this reality because our lives stumble down winding roads on their way to various intermediate destinations that we might not even be aware of when we arrive at them. That last sentence was itself a circuitous adventure. But I really mean this. Each one of us, God has sent. Here. Now. This is not an ego thing. This is not someone claiming to be “God’s Gift” because he thinks he is “all that and a bag of chips,” as we used to say. No. This is the Gospel truth. God has sent each of us for a purpose that is written on our hearts, just waiting for our passion to speak it to the world.

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Righteousness and Grace

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Sermon for Sunday, January 12, 2020 || Epiphany 1A || Matthew 3:13-17

Today, I’m going to talk about the concept of righteousness. The word “righteousness” is tricky because we almost never hear it decoupled from the word “self.” We all know it’s not a good thing to be self-righteous. It is, however, good to be righteous. But self-righteousness has such a monopoly on the concept of righteousness that we never take the time to understand what righteousness really is. So that’s what we’re going to do this morning. And we’re going there because of an odd exchange between Jesus and John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading.

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